Round Rock’s Texas Venture Crawl, 10/6/23

From Adriana Nunez-Young, Head of Innovation at the Round Rock Chamber:

Round Rock’s Texas Venture Crawl was a HUGE success! Thank you to everyone who came out to support and for CS Freeland for thinking of Round Rock when putting this amazing event together. Thank you to everyone who joined us! It was a great evening for entrepreneurs to get together and network.

Director of Business Attraction & Strategic Initiatives, Danielle Morrissey, and I were able to talk about entrepreneurship in Round Rock and the Defense Innovation Fund. We were also excited to announce the second recipient of our Defense Innovation Fund grant, Elysium Robotics, as well as enjoy a special demo from our first Defense Innovation Fund grant recipient, Smarter Reality!

Big thank you to Brandon Cates for closing us out! We appreciate your endless support of the Round Rock Chamber and our initiatives. Lastly, thank you to my team for helping me pull this event off day of Alejandra Murillo, Iris Day, YJ Lin, Kimberly Dolson!

More photos from the Round Rock Chamber here.

From YJ Lin, Senior Program Manager for Dell For Startups:

Woke up at 4AM so I could fly back to Austin from Atlanta. It was long but I didn't want to miss the Texas Venture Crawl. Key highlights:

Always great catching up with Adriana Nunez-Young and Danielle Morrissey- talking about the Defense Innovation Fund the Round Rock Economic Development team and Chamber of Commerce is focused on to support startups in the Military and Defense space. Absolutely love their energy and passion for building up our small but driven city!

Love getting to see Jimi Threet again and catching up more intentionally as our Greater Austin Bunker Labs city lead and hearing about more plans this year to support our veterans' startups and more support in the mental health and wellness space! Love having Aaron Galindo, one of our newest Dell Technologies Startup IT Advisors who joined us to learn more about the startups that live here! He also has a wealth of background in the entrepreneurship space to make sure we can support entrepreneurs the right way!

Thank you Texas Venture Alliance for setting up! Love how driven and connected CS Freeland is to make it all happen. Can't wait to see how Texas continues to shape our startup ecosystem.

More photos from YJ’s post here.

From Julie Lessiter, Vice President at Texas State University - Round Rock:

Great time learning about the Defense Innovation Fund through the Round Rock Chamber. Met various companies either in or looking to break into the defense sector. Central Texas is the place to be.

View more from Julie’s post here.

CS Freeland, Texas Venture Alliance:

The Round Rock Chamber threw a really great Texas Venture Crawl for their community at the Alcove Cantina private events room. What was even more incredible was that during their event, they presented a check for $20,000 to a robotics startup there! Big congratulations to Elysium Robotics! Their Head of Innovation, Adriana, goes above and beyond and has been incredibly open and collaborative— our networks benefit from all the hard work.

Put the next statewide, simultaneous venture networking experience on your calendar for next year here.

About the Texas Venture Crawl

The Texas Venture Crawl is a simultaneous statewide startup and investor networking experience founded in 2022 and is a partnership between Texas Venture Alliance and leading cohosts all across Texas. It started in downtown Austin, hosted in 5 venues, used 3 venture shuttle stops, and attracted more than 1,300 attendees.

This year it grew to 10 cities, 15 venues, 22 committee members, 10 volunteers, 40+ venture panelists, and 2,500+ Texans. The following cities participated: Austin, Dallas, Round Rock, Houston, Kerrville, Brownsville, El Paso, Buda, Boerne, and San Antonio.

Thank you to the “Texas-sized” statewide sponsors: Pacific Western Bank, Akerman, the Texas State Chamber of Commerce (Texas Association of Business), In Good Taste Wines, Liquid Death Water, and returning supporter from the first founding sponsorship of the Venture Crawl, Eisner Amper.